I think about that for a minute and then nod, agreeing with the assessment. “You don’t even look like you could take that many shots down.”
“Well,” he says with a sad smile, “I was twenty-three then. And I really liked drinking.”
“And now?”
“Thirty-five,” he says slowly. “And I like drinking slightly less. Fuck. Twelve years of my life.”
“What’s your favorite season?” I ask. He thinks about it for a minute, and I hold my shot glass out to him. He splashes more whiskey into it.
“Maybe . . . uh, Lauren A.? That was my third season, right before I got promoted. It was obvious from the first day of filming she was going to pick Rhett, so the whole season was a bitch to produce, but I don’t know, they’re really happy together. I like when it feels like I’ve done something good, you know, led people to happiness.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” I say.
“Come on, don’t you write romance novels?”
I shrug. “No one reads them.”
“Well, either way, you’re a romantic. Deep down in there somewhere.”
“You too.”
We sit with that for a minute, and then we both take our shots.
“So, what do the producers actually do all day? Just sit around thinking about how best to fuck us over?”
He chuckles at that. “Exactly.”
“What then?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Just what’s going on with all of you. What your mental state is, what you’re saying about Marcus and each other. We’re just here to create opportunities for you to showcase who you are.”
I lean forward toward him eagerly. “And who am I?” I ask.
He flashes me a sly grin. “A lit match on a very dark night.”
I know the foray into poeticism was for me. “That’s how wildfires get started.”
I can tell he likes that when he answers, “Then sounds about right.”
“What about Marcus?” I ask now that I’ve got him talking. “What does he say about me?”
Something passes over his face, though it happens so quickly, I’m not sure I didn’t imagine it. “Come on, don’t play dumb, Jac,” he says, and then I’m definitely sure I imagined it, the way the words roll off his tongue. “You’re number one on his list. He says he can’t believe someone like you is even here.”
“Hmm,” I say. If that’s true, it works for me. “Pour me another shot.” I hold out my glass, and he obliges. I take the shot.
“Hmm? That’s it?”
“Well, you have to tell me that so I’ll be invested in this stupid show.”
“Eh, if he wasn’t really into you, I’d tell you to make some grand gesture to get his attention or you’ll be going home tomorrow.”
I look over at him as he throws back another shot. “I think you might be a bad person,” I say, holding my glass out to him. He refills it.
“You think so, too?”
“Marcus said you were his producer,” I say, looking for a telltale reaction.
He blinks, unaffected. “Yeah.”
“Well, why aren’t you his producer now?”
Henry shrugs. “Sometimes, it happens that way. Janelle is good with leads anyway, and we’re all always kind of producing.”
“Just seems weird if you were the one who knew him best.”
“Marcus is a complicated guy” is all Henry says in response.
“How so?”
He takes a shot. “That’s for you to find out for yourself.”
We’re both drunk now, I’m pretty sure. I doubt he hangs quite the same as he did when he was twenty-three. God knows I don’t.
“I’m really different from Shailene,” I tell Henry then. “How could Marcus like us both?”
“Aren’t you sick of talking about Marcus?” Henry asks me, leaning his head back and staring up at the sky. “I thought you were above all of this?”
“Everyone has been begging me to talk about Marcus since I got here,” I say. “It’s conditioning at this point.”
